By R. F. Foxfire

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I stumble into existence in a swivel chair and frown at the game of Tetris on the monitor before me. The chair creaks as I sit up, and an L-block begins its slow fall down the screen, one step at a time.

I hear beeps and keystrokes and voices and competing Nintendo melodies and look up to an open-floor office, rows of people in suits and ties hunched over their computers, all playing Tetris with laughable intensity. Their red, purple, blue, green, and yellow tetrominoes sinking at different speeds. I chuckle.

At my right, a young man yells, “No wait! Fuck!” and I turn to see the last seconds of his game. His blocks build up a motley pyramid and top out at the deathceiling, sounding a high-pitched blare.

GAME

OVER

The man shrivels into himself like a date-fruit and dries out but for the wets of his eyes, then turns to dust and floats away, leaving an empty chair.

“What the fuck!” I yell, startled by my own voice, unfamiliar and deep.

“You’re okay, hon,” says the woman to my left.

I taste something chalky and lean over and spit onto the vinyl floor protector and hold my breath to avoid inhaling his mortal remains as they drift by. A bearded man in a pinstripe suit jolts into existence in the vacated chair. We share a look of perplexity and his game starts.

A soft thud as my L-block lands at the bottom of my screen, rotated like a middle finger to heaven. My fingers find the arrow keys and I pull a yellow square to the side and let it float down. I need to think. My heart keeps time with the insultingly cheerful 8-bit “Korobeiniki” playing internally on a loop.

“You doing alright over there, hon?”

I keep my eyes forward and say in a voice too low to be mine, “What is this, some kind of sick joke?”

“You’re telling me.”

I clear each line to the bottom and breathe in the peace of that. The dopamine. This is the easiest it will ever be.

I jump at a scream disintegrating somewhere in the office. The quiet roar of the AC. Brown-gray dust floating over the heads of the sitting professionals in front of the sunlit windows and the skyscrapers beyond. An unreachable view.

“At least the game is fair?” I ask.

“The last person in your seat came in at level twenty. By the time they realized they had to play, their game was over. I guess we’re supposed to be grateful.”

“Grateful to who?”

“Hell if I know.”

“I’m not being grateful for shit.”

“That’s the spirit.”

I turn to see her smirk. Piercing blue eyes, siren-winged eyeliner, black lipstick. Silver nose stud. Straight black hair with blunt bangs. Her legs crossed, a black shimmer dress and sockless lowtops. On her right arm a full-sleeve tattoo of leafy vines entangling Celtic knot-work behind a three-faced goddess.

“Did you get that tattoo before?”

“I’m not sure there was a before, but I like it.”

“Me too.” The chiptune music, the level-up jingles. Another shout. And then the ash. “What’s your name?”

“No memories, no names. But–” she points to her username, NovaNomad203.

“Nova?”

“Works for me.”

Zap! I clear a single row instead of a triple to slow my game. QuantumGamer837.

“Quantum?” she queries.

“I guess.”

“What would you rather I call you?”

I ponder how to feminize it. “Quanta.”

“Beautiful,” she says.

Someone behind me hushes us.

We smile. She plays her game, and I play mine. We take turns stealing glances at each other. But I reach level five, and my blocks fall faster. I mash the spacebar to rotate a purple T-block and slot it just in time. Somewhere in the office a scream is cut short but not cleanly.

“This can’t be all there is.” My voice catches.

“I know, hon. I know.”

“What’s been tried?”

“People’ve tried opening the command prompt, pulling the power, smashing the motherboard. No way to stop it, but it does randomly freeze sometimes. Anywhere from seconds to hours. I actually showed up in a freeze. My game started working right before your predecessor bit it.”

I shift my weight and feel the ashes in my seat. “My kingdom for a pause button,” I jest.

She chuckles.

“Has anyone tried the door?”

“It’s locked. I used my extra time to try things and learn from people.”

Nova is a level below me. Her black-glitter nail holds down arrow and sinks an I-piece into a rainbow well to score a tetris—whoosh!—leveling up. She’s keeping pace.

“Hey, it’s not a race.” I nod to her screen.

Nova shrugs. “One lady ran to the window and put her hands on the glass, standing there a whole minute before she passed. Just looking out. There’s a park down there, some trees–”

The man at my right yells “Fuck!” and bursts out of his seat, checking me and rolling me away from my desk and spinning my chair a quarter turn. He sprints down the hall and dusts the far door with his abdicated matter.

My shoulder hurts. I lurch back up to my keyboard, but a red Z-block has landed in the worst possible place, creating a gap I will never be able to fill. Nova gasps.

My fatal flaw. My hamartia.

My heart beats fast, the blocks fall faster. I miss a two-line clear. I can’t talk to her anymore. I grit my teeth as my fingers pound the pitiless plastic keys.

Finally I break. “You know what, Nova? Fuck this. I want to kiss you.”

“That’s suicide,” she says.

“We’re dead either way.”

“Are you sure, Quanta?”

“Absolutely.”

“Okay.”

“Ready?”

“Go!” she shouts. Like a kids’ game.

We leap out of our chairs into each other’s arms. Our lips meet, our hearts meet, our celestial dust commingles into one sweeping whirl of passion and defiance, and the sound of office applause sends us off.

Thar sáile.